Alex Monk UKCP Accred. Psychotherapist HCPC Accred. Art Therapist

About me

I have a private psychotherapy practice as a UKCP registered psychotherapist and an HCPC registered art therapist. I am based in Hackney, East London.

I have a Masters in Integrative arts psychotherapy with distinction and five years of rigorous professional clinical and theoretical training. My experience is diverse, having worked in NHS mental health services for both inpatient and community settings, for charities and in private practice.I also work as as a Clinical Supervisor for nurses at Asthma UK. As part of my commitment to ethical practice and continuing professional development, I regularly evaluate my work and attend seminars and workshops.

Prior to becoming a Psychotherapist I taught English abroad in Poland and Italy before returning to the UK where I worked in recruitment, marketing and international development. I am particularly interested in the arts, including visual art, film and music. I also regularly record and perform as a musician. All of this experience informs my work as a therapist.

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF THERAPY?

Psychotherapy can help you re-discover and develop a relationship to parts of yourself that due to painful experiences you perhaps never knew existed before. Emotions are no longer to be frightened of or overwhelmed by; they now become aspects of you that are only to be experienced. This new way of relating to your emotional life can improve your relationship between your instincts and capacity to reflect on your experience (instead of getting 'caught up' in it). It can also increase your resilience to life's everyday problems, deepen your contact with life and become an important source of creativity. Therapy takes time, but its developmental effects can be profound and long lasting.

MY APPROACH

I will listen carefully to what you tell me and give you space for you to reflect on your life experiences and how they have impacted upon you. I will not judge or tell you what I think you 'should' do. However, along with actively listening I will offer my own reflections and perspectives from time to time if I think they will be helpful to you and the process.

I appreciate that it is not easy to talk about painful experiences which we have suffered and we often prefer not to think about by virtue of the fact they have made us suffer. It is therefore very important that I facilitate an environment of care and empathy. This is so crucial therapeutically particularly as for those of us who you have been emotionally wounded, almost in all cases did not receive the empathy and care they needed at the time and therefore definitely require it from their psychotherapist.

WHAT HAPPENS IN A THERAPY SESSION?

Some sessions will be as you might imagine in a 'traditional' counselling/ psychotherapy session where it is two people , talking through an issue. And this works very well! However, if you feel it can work for you we can also turn to less cognitive modes of thinking such as working with the resources of your imagination.

This might mean working with dream content or an image that resonates with you. You may also wish to use art materials or a visualisation exercise as a way of deepening your contact with your unconscious mind. We will then spend time thinking together about whatever has emerged from this work and think about how it might relate to you. Making such links can be an invaluable process, as once life experiences and their associated emotions can be named and thought about they are much less likely to feel like they are in control of you or running your life.

ART THERAPY

I am a trained art psychotherapist but it is not a pre-requisite that you use art materials in our work together. You may feel what works best for you is to talk in the traditional way. If you wish however, you might like to work with expressive arts such as drawing/ painting or working with clay. Drawing/ artistic skills are not needed at all! These non-verbal methods of expression are sometimes very helpful in terms of accessing the unconscious and deeper layers of the self. It can also help you to calm feelings of anxiety, or safely express your anger and make sense of it.

Training, qualifications & experience

I have worked as a Psychotherapist in NHS mental health services for both inpatient and community settings, working with groups and individuals with a wide range of mental health concerns and learning disabilities. My own ongoing professional development is an essential part of my work as a psychotherapist and this combines both experiential and theoretical trainings including psychoanalytic, integrative and arts psychotherapies.

Photos & videos

Fees

Published articles

Further information

I have written several articles on a range of subjects published on Counselling Directory, Private Psychiatry and Psychereg.com as well as on my own website. Please feel free to read these as this will perhaps give you a further sense of how I work.